Eleanor Roosevelt said,
"The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience."
Welcome to The Soul Podcast. I’m Stacey Wheeler.
Have you ever heard the word neophile. It means lover of the new. And we all have a touch of the neophile. We like new things. New clothes, new tech, new cars… new is nice. New stuff is good… and at the core of us, we all love new experiences. Think of a time you went somewhere you’ve never been or did something you’d never done. That time the experience left you feeling amazing. Remember that? For the more adventurous of us, it’s happens a lot. When we experience new things, it can trigger something in us. And these emotions feel nice. So nice, you may even go back to the same place -or same experience… to try and replicate that feeling you got the first time. The second time around…. well, maybe it’s nice, but it was nowhere as good as the first time. That’s because the second time isn’t new. Remember the firsts in your life? The first kiss, the first roller coaster ride. The first tropical vacation. Those are new moments. Firsts are powerful. New feels so good you can become addicted to it. The simple truth is that life is meant to be experiential. From a scientific perspective, we can say that our brains are wired to learn new things. There’s research that proves there’s a chemical reward system in our body that gives us a boost of dopamine when we have positive new experiences. This is what’s called the feel-good chemical. So our evolutionary process has set us up to want to experience new things. That’s the biological side of it.
From a spiritual perspective, we can say it’s part of our souls’ journey is to experience the universe… to experience the world. And this desire lasts forever… no matter how successful we are, or how much money we have. We never arrive at a point where we no longer desire new experiences. Think of the wealthiest people you can. Consider all the tech billionaires. They’re so rich they can do anything they want. Go anywhere they please. After w time, they can even start to run out of cool places to go and cool things to do. Some buy mega yachts to get a new experience. And even that gets old. Now it seems the wealthiest men in the world have become so bored that the rocket ship has replaced the expensive personal ship. All this is driven by the need to experience something new. It’s that big a drive.
Life is experiential. When given the opportunity, we all try to experience something more amazing than we’ve experienced. And all this new experience is good for our souls. It expands the scope of our life journey while we’re here on Earth. When we look back from the others side, we’ll be happy we had a full scope of experience. Happy that we tested the boundaries. And the desire for new experience is good for humanity. It’s the thing that constantly drives us to learn and grow and understand more about our realty and history on the planet and in the universe. And to create new things. Mew technology. New devices.
Think of friends or family you’ve known who stopped seeking new experiences. Who closed themselves off in their own way. What are those people’s spirits like? When we stop seeking new experiences we retract. We whither, and we decline.
Now consider the people you know who are always out having new experiences. The adventurers. What are their spirits like? Seeking new experiences opens us and fills us with a joy for life. And all that joy makes us want more.
Many of us don’t realize it’s the new experience that makes us feel that way. I know people who habitually go on vacations to the same places… or take the same sorts of vacations… maybe a cruise, or all-inclusive. It was great the first time, so they try something like it again. They think they’re seeking happiness. A happy experience. They don’t know that what they’re really seeking the new. If they did, they could focus on that and fine even more joy by changing it up. Trying something different. A different place. A different experience. When we do that, it’s next level.
When’s the last time you got out of your comfort zone? Did you know that new is the real target? Now you do.
So, when you start to feel sluggish or depressed -remind yourself that life is meant to be experiential. Find a way to get outside of the familiar. Take a chance. Have a new experience. Get out and feed your soul’s desire to experience life.
